


A Different Kind Of Poison

by queensburner



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Belly Rubs, F/M, Pining, Post-Time Skip, Reunions, Weight Gain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25888225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queensburner/pseuds/queensburner
Summary: Five years.He had changed in that time as well.  The other members of the Alliance Roundtable had seemingly accepted him, having grown more mature, more sophisticated, perhaps more subtle.  He had changed physically as well.  One hand grasped absently at the place where his braid had once fallen at the side of his face.  Besides, that was hardly the only part of his appearance that was different.  Of course, he had grown into an adult: his shoulders had broadened, his jaw had squared, and he had grown a scant few inches.  But there were other changes.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 45





	A Different Kind Of Poison

As his ivory-white wyvern breathed, her sides dug into Claude’s thighs. The feeling was not unfamiliar; he had, after all, learned to ride a wyvern at nearly the same time that he had learned to walk. Nonetheless, his heart pounded as though he was a virgin to the skies.

If Byleth would return, now would be the time. She would return. She had to.

The morning sun was chasing Claude as he flew westward over the Oghma Mountains, leaving Derdriu and Almyra in his wake. Its butterscotch light warmed the back of his already hot neck. Dawn had almost broken over Garreg Mach Monastery on the twenty-fifth of the Ethereal Moon, marking five years since Byleth had promised to come back to him. . . that was, to come back to them.

Five years.

It had been nearly five years since they had last seen one another. Where had she been all this time? Part of him wanted to be angry, but most of him was simply desperate. He had believed that she held some sort of affection for him, perhaps even attraction if he dared to hope, but it was possible he had read her wrong. It was so easy to read her wrong.

Five years.

So much had changed in that time. So much needless blood had been shed on the ground far below him. So much prejudice. If she had just stayed with him instead of running off into needless danger, he thought, they could have made things different.

Five years.

He had changed in that time as well. The other members of the Alliance Roundtable had seemingly accepted him, having grown more mature, more sophisticated, perhaps more subtle. He had changed physically as well. One hand grasped absently at the place where his braid had once fallen at the side of his face. Besides, that was hardly the only part of his appearance that was different. Of course, he had grown into an adult: his shoulders had broadened, his jaw had squared, and he had grown a scant few inches. But there were other changes.

His hand moved away from his face to grip at his thigh. The changes to his body had happened so gradually that he was unaware of them for a long time. It had pained him to be holed up inside the Riegan manor, but he was clever enough to realize that the battlefield was not a smart place to be. He had kept up his training, but without the constant threat that came from the danger of the field, and without Byleth to push him to his limits, his body had started to change. To expand. To grow soft.

There was no use in beating around the proverbial bush: he had let himself get fat.

Gods, but it was so easy to overindulge when he was stuck inside. Growing up on frequent celebratory feasts, he had always been a big eater. Granted, the food here in Fódlan wasn’t quite as good as the food in Almyra, but it was still good, and so rich. With not much else to do but sit around and worry over politics, he wound up spending his time eating. The weight had crept up on him slowly. He wasn’t certain exactly how much he had gained, fifty pounds, he guessed, maybe more. Over the course of the past four years or so, the extra fat had padded out his gut, his ass, his hips. He was starting to develop a double chin, and his love handles would be sticking out from his sides if his belt were not wrapped so tightly around his waist.

And what would Byleth think when she saw him, assuming she even showed up to the reunion? Would she see him as the boy that he had been before? As a man? Would she be disgusted at how he had let himself go?

It was no use wondering, he reminded himself. All he could do was keep flying and hope to find her waiting for him.

Through the veil of mountains and morning mist, Garreg Mach became visible as Claude drew closer. If he was going to turn back, not wishing to see what remained of his old academy, this was his last chance.

He continued on resolutely. The monastery grew larger in his field of vision, as did the lump in his throat.

He landed in the grounds of the monastery and tied his wyvern in a courtyard near the cathedral, a location where he would often land after long rides back in the day. The monastery was devoid of life. It was as though the monastery had been drained of its own life when its occupants had fled. The otherwise still air seemed to echo with each of his footsteps. If Garreg Mach was a microcosm of Fódlan, there was something to be said about its deathly silence in the time of Her Imperial Majesty’s war.

The placidity of the place began to settle deep into his lungs. Was it possible that none of the Golden Deer would remember their promise?

Just when Claude was beginning to lose hope, a flash of mint green caught his eye. Only a handful of people that could be.

“You overslept, Teach,” he hoped that the unease didn’t come through in his voice. “Pretty rude to keep a fella waiting like that, wouldn’t you say?” He turned to give her what he hoped looked like an easy smile. “What’s with that surprised look, friend? You didn’t think I’d give up on you coming back, did you?” He approached her carefully, as though she were a trick of the light, a false oasis in the desert that might disappear when he got too close.

But she remained. Claude felt his heart coil tighter as he took her hands in his own. The pudginess of his fingers would be hidden under his leather gloves, and his clothes obscured most of his softened frame, but from this close, there would be no hiding his double-chin.

If it bothered or surprised her, she did not say it. In fact, she still had not said a thing.

“Can you feel it?” he continued to fill the hollow silence of the abandoned monastery with his own words. “A new dawn is finally here. And not just for us. For all of Fódlan.”

Byleth was exactly as beautiful as he remembered, as though she hadn’t aged a day since the siege on Garreg Mach. “How did you know I had been asleep?” Her expression didn’t change when she spoke.

His eyebrows, though, quirked. “What do you mean?”

“You said it yourself. I overslept. How did you know?”

“You can’t be serious. There’s no way you’ve been napping all these years.”

But she insisted it was the truth. Some back and forth convinced him that she was telling the truth and not attempting to play some strange joke on him.

“You must be hungry, then.” He offered out what food he had brought along. It was modest, just a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, and a skin of red wine. The hunger already edging into his stomach made him feel like such a fatass.

They sat together on the dusty floor. He spread his cape out below them like a mock picnic blanket, and they shared the food he had brought. She watched him eat with those big, glassy eyes of hers, and he tried his hardest not to make a pig of himself. As he ate, his belly bloated out and pressed harder against the already-tight cloth belt wrapped around it. It felt as though her eyes were even more intently fixed on him than they usually were. He must have been imagining it, though, right?

This was hardly the first time they had eaten together. Many times, she had invited him to the dining hall to share a meal with her. Back then, he had always had to restrain himself from gorging on the food served there, and his appetite had only grown with time.

To distract her from his gluttonous eating, he tried to keep up a conversation about the events of the past years. “Leonie has taken up some intermediate work as a sellsword. Whether for the money or to be like you-know-who, I can’t say. Count Gloucester is grooming his dear son to be his successor. Practically the perfect little heir, that one. He’s been my opponent in many a Roundtable meeting. Wouldn’t surprise me if he doesn’t show up at all today.” But she continued to say little and stare at him profoundly.

Needless to say, it surprised him when she suddenly reached a hand out to touch his belly where it bulged out through the belt.

Her movements were always sudden. When she struck, her enemies never saw her blade coming. Not a single muscle movement could be used to predict the direction of her strike, down to the saccades of her eyes.

Claude had convinced himself that he had learned to read her. After all, he knew she would be here today when everyone else said that he was crazy for even thinking she was alive. Evidently, though, he was wrong.

Still, her touch felt so good on his stuffed stomach. He melted into it. When she reached to unwind the belt that held back the bulk of his gut, he didn’t want her to stop. Her hands rubbed along the curve of it, gently at first, then more firm. He moaned softly. So long had he wanted to feel her touching him so tenderly, not as an instructor or a healer, but as a woman.

She reached a hand up and cupped one of his chubby cheeks, stroking the stubble of his beard with her thumb. “You’re even more handsome than I remember.”

He couldn’t remember which one of them closed the distance between them. He only remembered the feeling of her lips on his and the taste of her tongue in his mouth. Her fingers tightened on his stomach.

“And here I was,” he said as he pulled away, “worrying you wouldn’t like my new look.”

“I guess everyone has changed,” she said, “except for me.”

He ran one of his hands through her green hair. “You say that like you didn’t change more than any of the rest of us.”

A terrible thought suddenly hit him, of the other Golden Deer seeing them like this, with his hand in her hair, stomach fat hanging out in front of him. He took her by the hands and pulled her up to standing. He wrapped his belt back around his soft middle.

“Come on, Teach,” he said. He placed one hand on the curve of his stomach. “I think I could use some exercise.”


End file.
